June 21, 2006
Day 2: To Clearwater Falls campground
Early in the morning it was 46F under clear skies. Definitely cooler in the steep forested canyon than at my house even though we're only at 900 feet elevation. We got on the road at 8:35AM. Early for me, late for Jacinto and Kelly. I shed my jacket after only 3 miles.
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We spent the entire morning riding alongside the North Umpqua river, upstream with the river on our right. That way we get the best views of the river and the slow pace allows us to savor the views. More enjoyable than last year's tour going the opposite direction, looking across the road to see the river.
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Today's route has one convenience store and no restaurants. We stopped for lunch at the Dry Creek store. Our plan was to bike to Umpqua hot spring. But at the store we learned that the footbridge to the hot spring has been removed. So we decided to skip the hot spring and continue farther towards Diamond lake.
Somewhere around 2000 feet elevation we started seeing mosquitoes. I had to swat mosquitoes when riding and they got steadily worse as we climbed. It's not easy to swat mosquitoes while climbing at 4 mph. As Kelly wrote in her journal, we hiked to Watson Falls in order to feed the mosquitoes.
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We arrived at the Clearwater campground (4000 feet elevation) at 6:10PM. It was uphill all day, a net climb of 3000 feet. The campground had swarms of mosquitoes. I immediately put on my rain suit and a mosquito headnet. I heated water for a shower but had to take my shower inside the pit toilet building because the mosquitoes were too thick outside. Fortunately it was cool enough to be comfortable while wearing multiple layers of mosquito armor.
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The pump on my stove wasn't working so Kelly made a big dinner for the 3 of us. After dinner I zipped myself in my tent because it was too annoying to do things outside with a cloud of mosquitoes in my face all the time. Hopefully the mosquitoes won't be a problem once we get out of the high Cascades.
Today was sunny all day. The temperature got up to the upper 70's even though we were at much higher elevation than yesterday.
Distance: 42.0 mi. (67.2 km)
Climbing: 3700 ft. (1121 m)
Average Speed: 6.1 mph (9.8 km/h)
Maximum speed: 30.8 mph (49.3 km/h)
Hiking 1 mile (1.6 km)
Today's ride: 42 miles (68 km)
Total: 87 miles (140 km)
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